Color Harmony: Intro to Color Theory
Though this section was mostly a primer on color theory concept definitions, one concept that was briefly touched on was the idea of synesthesia. The text mentioned a Wassily Kandinsky, an abstract artist, that heard the sound of musical instruments when he painted. He seemed to associate brighter colors with higher musical pitches, which makes logical sense to people who don’t have synesthesia. However, this association between music and color is rather interesting. As someone with a lot more musical background than visual art background, color analogies in sound are used quite frequently in chorale and instrumental lessons and rehearsals. The terms “dark” and “bright” are the most commonly used analogies, referring to concepts that are otherwise hard to put into words, but not relating in the same way that Kandinsky associates colors to sound. Instead, dark and bright sounds from a band teacher mean something more along the lines of the timbre of the music, which refers to the tone and quality of music outside of just basic sound mechanics like pitch and volume. A darker tone is more expansive and richer, whereas a bright tone is the opposite. Though both have their place, classic ensemble music prefers darker sounds, as they blend together much easier.
Yet another analogy between sound and music in terms of synesthesia comes with people who have “perfect pitch.” Many musicians that can instantly hear what scale note a musical tone is or how out of tune something might be often can tell through synesthesia. Some people with perfect pitch report that they can actually see the pitch of a musical tone — an A at 440 Hz might appear to be a specific shade of green or red, depending on the person, and if that A is out of tune, the color might be off in some way, whether that is through being slightly off color or more or less saturated in their mental image.
Long story short, music and color have a variety of ways they are intertwined in thinking, both through synergistic senses in ways many people don’t experience and through the language that we use to describe music and color. It’s interesting to say the least.